If you haven’t already, make sure to read (and listen to) Claudia La Rocco’s excellent WNYC post containing interviews with several NYC dance artists speaking about the role of race in their work and how they view the election. She apparently came up with the idea to do the interviews after an angry back and forth between Time Out editors and readers over the fact that the magazine’s list of top 40 New Yorkers who’ve made the most impact on the city over the last decade is, as Claudia put it, rather “monochromatic.”
At least things are different in the literary world. Check out the list of recent Whiting Award recipients. Also, Galley Cat is doing a series of author interviews about the election. Here’s one with poet Douglas Kearney over harmful language used in political speeches. His upcoming projects sound very cool.
Thanks so much, Tonya. This one was a lot of work – and nerve-wracking. A good reminder that I don’t deal with these issues enough in my own life as an observer of performance (and just in general).
I can imagine — I can tell how much hard work you put into it. That’s why it’s so commendable and so worthwhile to read. I kind of know how you feel — I’m currently trying to write a novel about a group of men and their experiences with the criminal justice system (all are minorities) which I thought would flow rather smoothly since I was a public defender for a while and worked with people like these characters. But the more I write, the more I realize I really don’t know them very in depth at all, how they think and feel, etc. I keep asking myself, is this right, am I getting it right…